Small behavioural changes can have a significant impact

Jun 29, 2017

Video Highlights

00:14 - We impact our planet, every day00:45 - Does too challenging mean impossible?01:05 - Two simple things you can start doing right now01:17 - The cuppa!02:32 - Paperless03:42 - A bit of math, just a bit :-)03:55 - Save the trees!04:39 - Research made in 2011 in the USA05:00 - The 452,000 trees!05:35 - Stop looking for the big things06:00 - Double win, you can also save money

Video Transcript

Hi guys, Laurent Bleu from FRiLuk. I am back on the red sofa and today we are going to talk about how small behavioural changes can have a significant impact.

We all know that we impact our planet, the environment, for good or bad. The thing is when people try to look at how they can change that, immediately they start looking at big things. I mean, we've heard it many times: "cycling is far better than using our car". We've said it many times as well: "Kids! Switch off the light in your bedroom!"

The thing is we are human beings...when something is a bit too challenging, we might give it a go, for a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, and then, you know... slowly we might kind of give up. So the question today is, if "too challenging means impossible?"

Actually, we don't think so. In today's video, I am going to explain you 2 small, tiny, simple things that can have a huge impact, and a good one, on the environment :-)

Ahhh...a nice cup of tea! The "cuppa" as they say in the United Kingdom. We are millions every day to make ourselves a nice cup of tea; I like tea, my wife likes tea, there are a lot of people who are loving tea.Now, the thing is: most of the people, what do they do? They kind of guess the amount of water they need in order to make their tea. They fill the kettle or half of the kettle, or they try to guess the best they can, they boil the water and most of the time they don't get it right.They end up with too much water and we know that this water, most of the time again, is going to end up wasted in the sink. That's a bit of a shame guys, you see it's a simple thing that we do every single day, wasting this precious resource such as water!

Instead, just do it the other way around: take your mug, fill it with the water you need, then pour the water into the kettle and then you will boil exactly what you need. A simple thing, no big deal I believe and that's going to have a massive impact on the environment. It is going to save you money as well but here we are talking about the environment :-)

Now the second simple thing is: go paperless!

Guys, it's unbelievable, there are still many people that did not switch to paperless...Let's do the math quickly: you see, in average it is estimated that 1 tree produces around 8,500 sheets of paper, which is a lot for 1 single tree, in average.Back in 2016, there were 19 million families in the UK. We receive a lot of bills, every month, bank statements, so let's do a little bit of calculation.

Let's say we take a gas bill, electricity bill, the council tax and maybe landline / phone / TV or whatever package you have, and then your bank statement that will average 4 sheets of paper. That's going to be, again in average 8 sheets of paper every single month. If we consider, if we assume that only 5%, only 5% of the households in the UK, will switch to paperless, then 12 months, 8 sheets of paper, 5% of those families which is 19 million back in 2016, you are basically going to save 11,000 trees every single year!And this is on the low end, I made very little assumptions here. Again, that's only on the scale of a country like the United Kingdom.

If we take that to a country like the USA. There are 126 million families in the US, so again with the same assumptions: 8 sheets of paper per month, and only 5% of those families switching to paperless, well that's actually 73,000 trees saved every single year!

That's a lot but hang on a second...there was a research made back in 2011 if I remember well, they really made a full research on how many bills and payments and bank statements we are getting, I mean they were getting in the US, and in 2011 it has been estimated that 452,000 trees could be saved if 5% of the Americans were switching to paperless.452,000 trees guys! This is unbelievable! And you know what? You will make yourself a favor...because you know, we accumulate all those bills, all this paper, and by law we are supposed to keep them safe, it takes a lot of space, and then when we don't have enough space we go to look for bigger houses, and then we consume more energy, so all in all, that's not a big win and again not good for the environment.

So stop looking for the big things, those 2 little things with how you can make your cup of tea and how you can switch to paperless are very easy to implement and can have a very positive impact on the planet.

Back to the paperless, it's only one thing you need to do, I mean you don't need to think about it anymore, your contact your bank, you switch to paperless, your contact your gas supplier, electricity supplier, you ask them to switch to paperless.I've actually discovered that many energy suppliers will actually give you a discount if you switch to paperless! So, double win :-)

Anyway guys, that was it for today, but I think it was important to be mentioned, I wish you an amazing day, as always, and...well I think it's a good time for a cup of tea now! You take care of yourself and I see you in the next video.